Am i good enough to start performing at restaurants?

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Tiziri

New member
Roshanna, I love your post.

Well, heck, how could anyone NOT love Soheir Zaki? Although I admit that one of my favorite clips of her was her dancing in some kind of mad scientist movie. Totally fun.

Speaking of dancers who aren't to everyone's taste, Esmerelda, if you're drawn to the kind of precision that Sadie has, you might also enjoy Didem and Asena, although they are Turks, so different fundamental style than the Egyptian dancers (they are definitely not classic Turkish style, though -- but that is another discussion.)/turcophile
 
Roshanna

Roshanna

New member
Tiziri said:
Well, heck, how could anyone NOT love Soheir Zaki? Although I admit that one of my favorite clips of her was her dancing in some kind of mad scientist movie. Totally fun.
Click to expand...

Ooh, I wanted to post that clip on the 'odd videos' thread as it's both weird and lovely, but I couldn't find it on Youtube and for some reason hadn't bookmarked it! Please do post it if you can find it!
 
T

Tiziri

New member
Roshanna said:
Ooh, I wanted to post that clip on the 'odd videos' thread as it's both weird and lovely, but I couldn't find it on Youtube and for some reason hadn't bookmarked it! Please do post it if you can find it!
Click to expand...

I was just looking for it without any luck myself. Drat! It *is* weird and lovely and a hoot (good example of a dancer doing comedy, since she pulls it off so well).

ETA: Aha! Found it! (no, wait, right movie, wrong clip)...Here is one that isn't the entire scene with Suheir:
http://youtu.be/Q8PJ2G3cDpg
 
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EsmereldaDancer1987

EsmereldaDancer1987

New member
Yes glad we cant put all this behind us and start afresh :)

Has anyone seen this video of "Little Egypt" im not sure if this actually was Little Egypt as ive heard some people say she was a myth so not quite sure about that one. The music on this video scares me lol


Little Egypt - YouTube
 
EsmereldaDancer1987

EsmereldaDancer1987

New member
Tiziri said:
Roshanna, I love your post.

Well, heck, how could anyone NOT love Soheir Zaki? Although I admit that one of my favorite clips of her was her dancing in some kind of mad scientist movie. Totally fun.

Speaking of dancers who aren't to everyone's taste, Esmerelda, if you're drawn to the kind of precision that Sadie has, you might also enjoy Didem and Asena, although they are Turks, so different fundamental style than the Egyptian dancers (they are definitely not classic Turkish style, though -- but that is another discussion.)/turcophile
Click to expand...

Yes Didem was one of the first belly dancers i saw on youtube, Asena is good also. I was disappointed when Didem had plastic surgery done though :/
 
shiradotnet

shiradotnet

Well-known member
EsmereldaDancer1987 said:
Yes glad we cant put all this behind us and start afresh :)

Has anyone seen this video of "Little Egypt" im not sure if this actually was Little Egypt as ive heard some people say she was a myth so not quite sure about that one.

Little Egypt - YouTube
Click to expand...

I have clips of both the dancer in the harem pants and the one in the dress in my collection.

I don't think the one in the harem pants (the first dancer shown) is actually from the Middle East. I think she's a generic American from the burlesque circuit doing a "hoochie koochie" shtick satirizing belly dance. Her technique doesn't look AT ALL like anything I've ever seen in the Middle East, not even in the edgiest of the shaabi clubs. Her harem pants costume is also not something you would have seen dancers from the Middle East wearing during that time.

Now, the one in the dress DOES look like a "real" dancer from the Middle East. Her name is Fatima, and with a bit of googling you should be able to find the full-length clip by Thomas Edison. I have put segments of that clip side-by-side with segments of Naima Akef and Soheir Zaki to show how some aspects of Fatima's technique were still part of the movement vocabulary done by later dancers many decades later.
 
EsmereldaDancer1987

EsmereldaDancer1987

New member
shiradotnet said:
I have clips of both the dancer in the harem pants and the one in the dress in my collection.

I don't think the one in the harem pants (the first dancer shown) is actually from the Middle East. I think she's a generic American from the burlesque circuit doing a "hoochie koochie" shtick satirizing belly dance. Her technique doesn't look AT ALL like anything I've ever seen in the Middle East, not even in the edgiest of the shaabi clubs. Her harem pants costume is also not something you would have seen dancers from the Middle East wearing during that time.

Now, the one in the dress DOES look like a "real" dancer from the Middle East. Her name is Fatima, and with a bit of googling you should be able to find the full-length clip by Thomas Edison. I have put segments of that clip side-by-side with segments of Naima Akef and Soheir Zaki to show how some aspects of Fatima's technique were still part of the movement vocabulary done by later dancers many decades later.
Click to expand...

Yeah the one in the harem pants looked similar to African dancing i thought. I shall have a look for that clip. I also found a video of a dancer called Princess Raja, she balances a chair in her mouth lol

Princess Raja - 1904 - YouTube
 
T

Tiziri

New member
shiradotnet said:
I don't think the one in the harem pants (the first dancer shown) is actually from the Middle East. I think she's a generic American from the burlesque circuit doing a "hoochie koochie" shtick satirizing belly dance. Her technique doesn't look AT ALL like anything I've ever seen in the Middle East, not even in the edgiest of the shaabi clubs. Her harem pants costume is also not something you would have seen dancers from the Middle East wearing during that time.
Click to expand...
I was thinking that, so it's nice to see it confirmed by an expert :)

I love the clip of "Ella Lola" here: http://youtu.be/ziOAYNqRjIY some of the comments discussing her origin are interesting. I love her spins. Shira, do you have more information?

I also wish I could find a longer video of the Naili dancer here: http://youtu.be/Fkbbpi7EI3w
Ed: Fatima! http://youtu.be/zxZoXJBILbc
(This is TOTALLY derailing, sorry.)
 
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T

Tiziri

New member
EsmereldaDancer1987 said:
Yes Didem was one of the first belly dancers i saw on youtube, Asena is good also. I was disappointed when Didem had plastic surgery done though :/
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I think her enhancements look a bit big for her delicate frame, but if she likes them, good on her (although there's also surely pressure to "improve" one's looks, so who knows. I do know that Tanyeli, another Turkish dancer, has said before that she regrets having gotten her nose done. I think it looks fine, but it's her nose, after all.)

Darshiva said:
Derailing encouraged, go right ahead. I'm thrilled to see the thread take a positive turn.
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Yes, after I looked at it, I thought, "Wait, no; this is better."
 
shiradotnet

shiradotnet

Well-known member
Tiziri said:
I was thinking that, so it's nice to see it confirmed by an expert :)

I love the clip of "Ella Lola" here: Belly Dance-Ella Lola-1898 Turkish Song-1900 - YouTube some of the comments discussing her origin are interesting. I love her spins. Shira, do you have more information?
Click to expand...

According to a 1902 article about Ella Lola in the New York Clipper, she was born in the Boston area in 1883. To me, she looks like an American who has made a legitimate effort to learn something about Turkish dance and is trying to do it credibly. (As opposed to that dancer I described as looking like a burlesque person doing a satire of belly dance.) I'm thinking "Ella Lola" was a stage name - if you search ancestry.com for birth records for her on the date in that New York Clipper article, nothing comes up under the name "Ella Lola".

I don't think Ella Lola's dance is Ghawazee at all, even though some of the people on the comment thread on the clip you posted say so. The comments pegging her as "Ghawazee" said they based their conclusion on her costume, but I think they got it backward - the garb we associate with Ghawazee came from the Turkish fashion of the time. As of the 1800's, Egypt was still very much ruled by the Ottoman empire. The garb of the Ottoman overlords set the fashion tone throughout the empire, including Egypt. So I would say that Ella Lola's garb was consistent with Turkish fashion of the time - fashion that inspired the Ghawazee garb still used in the 1960's and 1970's by the Banat Maazin of Egypt. I think Ella had access to information on what real Turkish dancers wore and how they danced, but I think she learned from a Turkish dancer, probably Romany, rather than being one herself.

Here's another clip of Ella Lola:

Ella Lola, a la Trilby - YouTube
 
T

Tiziri

New member
Shira, thank you. I thought it felt more Turkish Romany-flavored, from what I've seen. I like her spinning technique: the foot movement reminds me of Mevlevi turning.

Regarding Didem, because I prefer the more classic Turkish style, I was only mildly enthusiastic about her for a while (she's often felt to be bit technical at the expense of artistry.) But the more I watch her the more I appreciate her, and she's really grown artistically, I think. I've seen a few videos of her where she's just brilliant.
 
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D

DancingArabian

New member
Since the topic of Didem came up...

Does anyone know of other Turkish dancers that are good to watch? If you know what style of Turkish they do, please note that as well.
 
Kartane

Kartane

New member
DancingArabian said:
Since the topic of Didem came up...

Does anyone know of other Turkish dancers that are good to watch? If you know what style of Turkish they do, please note that as well.
Click to expand...

I am not super great at spotting fine nuance in styles yet, but one thing that has helped me is Mahsati's YouTube page. She has playlists of all different styles from the various Oriental style to a bunch of the folkloric. Just great!

http://www.youtube.com/user/mahsati/videos?flow=grid&view=1
 
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Amanda (was Aziyade)

Amanda (was Aziyade)

Well-known member
shiradotnet

shiradotnet

Well-known member
Hi Esmerelda! If you're still following this thread, I wanted to go back to something you didn't exactly ask about, but I think was kind of implied by your question. I hope you don't mind.

You said that friends of yours had suggested you look for an opportunity to dance in a restaurant - although we discussed the issue of performing in a situation that requires experienced professionals, we didn't really talk about the idea that your question implicitly suggested: how to go about taking your dance to the next level.

I have some ideas in this article on my web site that may prove helpful to you as you think about how to grow as a dancer and start putting yourself out there: Belly Dancing: From Student to... What?
 
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EsmereldaDancer1987

EsmereldaDancer1987

New member
shiradotnet said:
Hi Esmerelda! If you're still following this thread, I wanted to go back to something you didn't exactly ask about, but I think was kind of implied by your question. I hope you don't mind.

You said that friends of yours had suggested you look for an opportunity to dance in a restaurant - although we discussed the issue of performing in a situation that requires experienced professionals, we didn't really talk about the idea that your question implicitly suggested you're wanting to take your dance to the next level.

I have some ideas in this article on my web site that may prove helpful to you as you think about how to grow as a dancer and start putting yourself out there: Belly Dancing: From Student to... What?
Click to expand...


Thank you Shira, i shall have a read through that now :)
 
T

Tiziri

New member
DancingArabian said:
Since the topic of Didem came up...

Does anyone know of other Turkish dancers that are good to watch? If you know what style of Turkish they do, please note that as well.
Click to expand...

You might want to take a look at this thread:
http://bellydanceforums.net/dance-styles/16864-turkish-bellydance-videos.html
http://bellydanceforums.net/dance-styles/17709-turkish-style.html
And some vintage links here:
[URL="http://www.bellydanceforums.net/video-clips-youtube/9944-old-footage-turkish-dancers.html"]http://www.bellydanceforums.net/video-clips-youtube/9944-old-footage-turkish-dancers.html[/URL]
Lauren has a page here about Turkish:
Belly Dance Stuff: Styles -- Turkish Oriental which includes some of the above dancers (but I think different videos), and a few others (Nejla Ates, Nourhan Sultan, Prenses Banu, among others). She also gives commentary about their styles (IIRC, I've read somewhere that Prenses Banu considers herself more Egyptian style. Anyone know?)

I thikn Shira's wonderful and wholly huge site has some as well; looking there now (but getting sidetracked reading other things on it!)
 
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